In a forest lane, there traveled one who walked astride two lands; though neither did one land lay to his right, nor the other to his left, he nonetheless straddled them, walking against the contiguous, blustering flow of their time.
He shouldered a great sack, upon which were set a dozen countenances, molded from the likes of Anguish, Confusion, Denial, Scorn. Each had come to him by the same means, and there were many more yet inside his sack.
A few, stashed away at the bottom, had been distilled from Joy. While the sack imposed a great burden on his body, these few had always been, he felt, his greatest privilege; and so, esteemed, his feet stepped lightly as leaves kissing the autumn ground. And onward, not discontent, he walked.
As the sun set in the East, he heard it, impossible as he knew it might happen: a crashing howl, a thing that had, somehow, come to him not of his own bidding. Its cry caromed closer, rising and rising until there emerged a creature that was, like himself, also in the shape of a man. Rivulets of blood covered its body; other blood, the traveler knew, for creatures such as this do not come to bleed easily. As it limped closer, sobbing into its own hands, the traveler saw, deep inside, plain as day, its injury, and the thousand it itself had inflincted unto to others in its long, tiresome journey to this place between lands.
"Ah," he said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out an instrument. "You have been met with a terrible fate, haven't you?" He the instrument to his mouth, and then, fingers splayed, began to play a rather soothing melody...
And he played, and he played, until the creature was no more than a child, whimpering and heaving between the wracking sobs, half-conscious on the ground. And before it, face up, there lay a mask.
He knelt over the shivering child. "Sometimes," he whispered, "it is not enough that we have the strength. Sometimes it not enough that we have the courage. And sometimes," he continued, picking up the mask and gazing back unto it, "it is not even enough that we have both." When he looked back, the child was gone.
In the mask, he did not see wisdom. He did not see patience. He did not see glory, or love, or grace.
And it was a shame, for it seemed they had been the least to go around.